Gender diverse leadership teams in healthcare will lead to solutions that are more inclusive.
The majority of the global healthcare workforce and consumer base is female, but the financial leadership across all stakeholders (hospital, insurance, and pharmaceutical companies) is predominantly male. This leads to missed opportunities as equal leadership will lead to stronger financial and health outcomes.
Women are essential actors in healthcare innovation and problem-solving.
Women’s roles as frontline healthcare workers, users, and consumers make them well-positioned to solve fundamental problems (access, high costs, R&D that prioritizes male over female prevalent conditions) that plague the sector.
Proximity to healthcare challenges makes women essential contributors to product R&D.
Performance improvement research from the healthcare sector has demonstrated that when frontline teams help solve systemic problems, the outcomes are more positive and sustainable4.
Investing early to influence the healthcare ecosystem.
At WoWE we invest at the intersection of gender and health through our portfolio companies including Intelligent Medicine Acquisition Corp (Nasdaq:IQMD), a SPAC focused on using Artificial Intelligence, Machine Learning, and big data to make drug discovery faster, cheaper, and more predictable. As well as Intelligent Medicine Exchange (IMX) which is building the first US market healthcare futures exchange to facilitate risk management and price discovery for all market participants leading to lower healthcare costs.
Establishing relationships early in the life cycle of high potential strategies like IQMD and IMX allows WoWE to influence and evolve the healthcare ecosystem to centralize the role of women as industry innovators and leaders.
1. Mathieu Boniol et al., “Gender Equity in the Health Workforce: Analysis of 104 Countries,” World Health Organization, 2019, https://apps.who.int/iris/handle/10665/311314.
2. Berlin et al., “Women in the Healthcare Industry.”
3. https://insight.kellogg.northwestern.edu/article/how-big-is-the-gender-gap-in-science-research-funding
4. “Improving Patient and Worker Safety: Opportunities for Synergy, Collaboration, and Innovation” (Oakbrook Terrace, IL: The Joint Commission, November 2012), 51.